Until the Morning
by SombraAlma
Summary: Adama/Roslin on New Caprica. "It all comes back to her in bits, as she's closing her eyes against the bright sunlight and pressing her temple back down against the soothing rough of his uniform jacket."


**Title: **Until the Morning**  
Rating: **PG-13 for drug use, though otherwise I'd have given it a PG.**  
Disclaimer: **Don't own them; just borrowing.**  
Summary: **Adama/Roslin on New Caprica. _It all comes back to her in bits, as she's closing her eyes against the bright sunlight and pressing her temple back down against the soothing rough of his uniform jacket._**  
Spoilers: **Unfinished Business, extended version**  
Note: **My first attempt at writing Battlestar Galactica. The title is (loosely) inspired by Dunderhoney's The Morning After.

* * *

She wakes with a throbbing headache and what's probably the imprint of an Admiral's pin on her cheek. It all comes back to her in bits, as she's closing her eyes against the bright sunlight and pressing her temple back down against the soothing rough of his uniform jacket.

_She's not entirely surprised to find him away from the crowds gathering for the day's festivities. She is surprised, however, to find him barefooted, his uniform jacket unbuttoned, playing in the sand. She watches him for a few moments before approaching; she thinks: This is what he must have been like before. Before wars, before deaths, before responsibilities and regrets. Before. She smiles._

She should get up, her practical side suggests, because it's only a matter of time before someone comes along and sees them – sees the Admiral and the former President – wrapped up in each other and sleeping off too much ambrosia and New Caprican leaf. She should get up because she could _really_ use some strong coffee right about now and she's sure he could too, and because they're both still wearing yesterday's clothes.

"_That's a nice color on you," he ventures, casually, as if his eyes aren't sparkling with something she'd doubted she'd see in a man's again, as if he didn't already know her cheeks would flush at the remark and where his gaze lands. And she knows he doesn't think her stupid, so she just smiles (I know you're flirting, Bill) and adjusts her dress so it covers a little more of her cleavage with that color he likes so much. She can tease right back, and he knows it._

But she's comfortable, despite the pounding head, and she thinks he must be too. And it occurs to her slowly (well, she's just woken up, after all) what the sound, the rumbling in his chest against her cheek, is.

Admiral William Adama snores.

The realization almost makes her giggle, and she shifts a little, lifting her head to watch him. He snores. And it's loud and obnoxious and kind of unbecoming. Not at all fitting for the Admiral of the Colonial Fleet, to be sure. So now she does giggle, and as she shifts her body a bit further from his embrace, his hand tightens, involuntarily, over her hip.

_She's trying her damnedest to keep a straight face as Gaeta rambles on, and she's going to have no idea, later, what the kid's been talking about. All her thoughts come in short, staccato self-admonitions: Don't you dare giggle now, Laura. Hide the joint. But for gods' sakes, don't burn a hole in the dress! No giggling. No snorting. No looking at Bill. Smile. Nod._

_Gaeta leaves._

_Laura giggles._

"Bill." She nudges him, fingers tapping lightly over the lapel of his jacket. He doesn't move; she sighs. "_Bill._"

At least he stops snoring.

His hand tightens again on her hip as she attempts to scoot away from him, and she makes a small sound in the back of her throat as she places her hand over his. Her fingers slip over the cool of his wedding band, and she places his hand over his stomach. Pokes him again. Harder.

"Admiral." Her Presidential voice. "Wake _up_."

A grunt. A groan. Much rustling of uniform and sandbag. Finally his eyes open, his hand automatically coming up to shield them from the bright sunlight. "Frak."

"_I'm a little drunk," she happily admits to him, hanging a bit too heavily on his arm._

"_Whole planet's a little drunk," he points out, gesturing towards the dance floor where there's chaos and laughter and the sound of everyone talking over each other, too loudly. "Have any more of your homegrown leaf?"_

_He grins at her then, and suddenly she feels very young, much younger, and the way he's looking at her is not the way the Fleet Admiral should be looking at the former-President-turned-schoolteacher, but she finds she doesn't care. At all. Frak propriety. She grabs his hand and tugs him behind a row of tents, stumbling over a sandbag but righting herself quickly enough to hold up, triumphantly, her last two joints._

"_Madam..." But he corrects himself with only the slightest hesitation, laughter in his voice, "Ms. Roslin, what _would_ the parents say?"_

_She giggles – she's doing a lot of that tonight – and slips down to recline beside him against the piled sandbags. "Admiral Adama..." She holds out her joint for him to light, "What _would_ the fleet say?"_

"Good morning to you, too."

He squints at her, and despite the pained look on his face – she was right about needing the coffee, of course – she sees a ghost of a smile beginning on his lips. "Good morning, Laura." Polite and controlled, today, in the aftermath of the giddy celebration and the heady drugs, but it's still there, the way he'd looked at her then, with his toes in the alluvial deposits and her hand on his arm.

"Mm. Better." She laughs a little as he struggles to sit up, groaning and rubbing his back. And she hears him mutter, barely audible, as he does so.

"We're getting too old for this."

She sniffs, feigning upset. "We? Speak for yourself, Old Man." But she cuts her eyes to his as she uses the nickname, and sees him smile as he shakes his head. Carefully. "And we couldn't let the kids have _all_ the fun."

_She's drowsy, feeling heavy and almost sated as she lays beside him, fingers tracing random patterns over the buttons of his jacket. And she's well aware of the press of his body against hers, but lazy enough and just stoned enough to not care to do anything about it just now. His warmth in the cooling darkness of the planet, his smell (spice and sweat and some familiar combination of the metal of Galactica and the must of old books); this is enough for now._

"_Is this really it, Bill?"_

_She thinks for the first time, just maybe, she wouldn't mind if it were._

She watches him as he gets to his feet, straightening his rumpled uniform and stretching, running his palm over his face. She waits, small smile on her own face as she thinks, this should be bigger, this intimate ritual of watching each other awaken.

But it's not so big after all; it just _is_. Comfortable and familiar, and she feels the same as she did yesterday, even though the look in his eyes is slightly different than it has been in the past. She presumes the same is true for the look in her own. (And now she stifles a giggle to herself; it could just be the hangover talking.)

"_Maybe we should just enjoy this."_

_She feels his smile against her temple before she hears it in his voice. "I am."_

He turns, laughter in his eyes as he sees her still sitting on the sand, knees drawn to her chest. He holds out his hand and she takes it, standing with a soft groan. He's right – they _are_ too old for this. "Coffee, Bill. We need coffee."

"That we do, Laura." He tucks her hand into the crook of his arm as they pick their way over sandbags and past tents. And this time, she hears the smile in his voice before she feels his lips brush her hair. "That we do."


End file.
